Sunday, August 26, 2007

Making History

It's been quite the week at work.

First, there was a contract bid due on Thursday at 1pm. So there were some late nights working on that. The technical proposal had to be submitted in a separate envelope from the financial proposal. And there had to be 5 hard copies and 3 CDs made of one proposal and 2 hard copies and 2 CDs of the other. I'm just glad it's done.

Then Thursday as well, the archivists came to collect our documents at work. So excited. My organization donated our papers to Georgia State University's Library Archives, specifically the Women's Collection. Social movements are made by individual people and organizations and so often the notes, newsletters, meeting minutes are just thrown away and lost to history.

Lost, like the press pass I had that both Bill Clinton and Al Gore signed when they were campaigning. But I've moved so often since then, who knows where it is?

So to prevent all our hard work to disappear in time, our organization donated our papers and the archivists will clean and organize them. Eventually I will be able to go to the library, and figure our the organization's history. But most exciting is that because these documents are in the library archives, academics across the US and into the future, will be able to access our documents!

There will be a record for all time of what a group of refugee and immigrant women did to make the world a better place. Like Margaret Mead said: Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.